The journaling:
Time for cruising! We boarded our beautiful ship, the Crystal Symphony, midday Monday. There were servers with trays of champagne to greet us, and then an invitation to find lunch and spend some time exploring the ship until our rooms were ready. A couple hours later, Norlene and Bob joined us on board and we explored some of the offerings of the Taste restaurant: many kinds of tapas.

We made ourselves at home for the week as we worked our way through six more ports on the way to Barcelona. We would have breakfast aboard, then leave for a day of exploration and usually return in time for drinks in one of the bars and then choosing a restaurant for dinner. Europeans eat very late! After dinner we sometimes went to a show, but on Wednesday we stayed up for a while to enjoy the White Party.

One thing I love about this ship is that it has an actual Promenade Deck, which is a very nice place to take a walk after dinner and look out over the ocean.